For helping to make cv a better movement. consider this your good deed of the day!

President Obama spoke at the National Holocaust Museum in D.C. today on a new executive order that empowers executive branch agencies to crack down on technology companies who enable bad guy regimes to crack down on dissidents and restive populations.

Let’s set aside for a moment the chilling implications of that sort of thing being turned on U.S. citizens in the future should we wish to exercise our First Amendment rights of assembly, speech, and religion.* Truly terrifying that such is not a wholly incredible (in its true meaning, “not believable at all”) possibility.

But let’s instead, for the moment, focus on a couple lines:

“We are haunted by the atrocities we did not stop.” And he went on to say stopping such tragedies is “a core national security interest and core moral responsibility of the United States of America.”

Now he was speaking specifically about Syria, where the anti-U.S. regime is opposed by an array of anti-U.S. factions, but the action would apply to what Iran did to dissidents in 2009, etc.

But what about the very nearby holocaust of more than 50,000,000 Americans over the last nearly 40 years? Fifty million lives snuffed out in this country, with the government’s stamp of approval, many with government subsidy, and with a loud voice demanding that government pay for more, far more, than ever before.

That atrocity that our government perpetuates is, of course, abortion. How can we really be up-in-arms about a few thousand people dying loudly and graphically before TV cameras and cell phone cameras in Syria and Iran when we continue to allow millions to be slaughtered in the muted, blinded death chambers of the wombs of America’s mothers?

Motherhood does not go away when the child is aborted—neither does the pain, the loss, the tragedy, the atrocity, of abortion. Perhaps we should train some of our technology and “moral responsibility” on defending the most beautiful, innocent, and helpless amongst us.

And how cynical is it that the man who voted thrice against the Born-Alive Infant Protection Act in Illinois, and who did more than anyone else to kill it, utters the words “moral responsibility” with regard to protecting anyone’s lives. Strange times, indeed.

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*More on the potentially dim future for these rights in a post later on.

18 thoughts on “Mr. President, we will forever be haunted by the atrocities we perpetuate.”

Human dignity is human dignity. We know from Scripture, from the life and words of Jesus Christ-upon whom our religion was founded as we seem to forget-that all human life is sacred. With this knowledge comes also a very important piece that all human life is equally sacred. We all possess dignity and rights that are inherent, not earned. When we begin to dismiss a few thousand deaths as trivial compared to the death of millions of unborn babies, we are perpetuating precisely the same kind of thinking that fosters the killing of ANY human life. Imagine a pregnant mother having to make the choice between her own life and that of her baby–in choosing abortion, some may say she is putting her own life as more important than her baby’s. She feels more worthy of life, perhaps. I would assume, Mr. Crowe, that you would view this as unacceptable–this baby is just as worth of living as her mother, right? So why is it that we continually put the lives of unborn children as being more worthy than every other human life? To do so defies the teachings of Jesus and engraves in our minds and hearts an “either/or” mentality that is only destructive and limiting.

To get through any amount of unjust, immoral deaths takes creativity and it requires a consistent ethic of life–one that mourns over the death of anyone killed by another for any reason. Would we mourn and protest more readily if we knew that many of the Syrian women were pregnant? If those killed were mothers or fathers? For who takes care of these children whose lives we are fighting to save after they are actually born? When it comes to a pro-life stance, abortion is not the first and foremost atrocity.

If we were to address root causes (poverty, hunger, violence, lack of education, jobs and housing; lack of emotional and spiritual support, the list goes on), instead of relentlessly protesting the symptom (the taking of a human life through abortion), then perhaps we could FINALLY come closer to reducing and ultimately eliminating abortion. This would require a look at what resources we have available to us to lift people out of these dire situations they find themselves in to where they feel they have no other choice but to abort.

Perhaps we could direct our attention to how 25% of our tax money goes to war–the taking of human life; this is pro-choice, we choose to kill others rather than address a real root problem–which amounts to over $500 BILLION going to the Dept. of Defense each year. IMAGINE the possibilities that could be born out of the kind of money, intelligence, creativity, energy and time going into a Dept. that is devoted to choosing death over life, just as we view the abortion movement as doing. Let us call for a transformation of our entire culture to one of LIFE that celebrates nonviolence and abhors violence and death–no matter whose life is being taken.

Rachel— First, I am not dismissing any unjust deaths. But not all of the deaths in those conflicts were obviously unjust. Every single abortion is necessarily unjust. That’s one difference. Second, abortion is not a “symptom.” Poverty and ignorance don’t *cause* or *force* someone to get an abortion—despair, hopelessness, and a malformed conscience do. People who live in poverty (and, for the record, there is no poverty in this country of the sort that should lead one to do anything as awful as abortion—government programs don’t allow for it) but who celebrate life and learn to see the good things in life will not abort at the same rate. Help people to be happy where they are, while always striving for better, joined with strong family values and a recognition of the great blessing that children are: that will bring down abortion rates. But that doesn’t mean it is acceptable for the government to continue to approve of something as inhuman and awful as abortion—there is no justification for it. “imagine there’s no war” is a farcical position that ignores the human condition in a fallen world. War is not always and everywhere unjust. It always represents a failure, but it is not always unjust. Abortion is always unjust. Period. So being “pro-choice” on war represents a position consistent with Catholic doctrine, while being “pro-choice” on abortion is decidedly anti-Catholic. No one should want war, but all should recognize that it can be justified from time to time. Hence we ought to remain vigilant and ready to wage it. Yes, imagine what we could do with the hundreds of millions of dollars that go to defense. Then imagine how little of it you could do when another nation that does not share your pacifism or your desire to institute heaven on earth overran you and us and made such charity impossible. Suddenly those hundreds of millions are gone, and you are under house arrest for wanting to do something good outside the auspices of the new totalitarian regime. Happily, our nation has done more on all three scores—security, liberty, and charity—than any nation in the history of the world. (hint: the three are related, through the political foundations we have in Christianity)

Rachel, thank-you for your excellent post. You obviously understand the laws of cause and effect. Abortion is an effect of all the causes you mention. Abortion will never end by making abortion illegal. Abortion will end only by eliminating the causes of unwanted pregnancies. Polio was not wiped out by a cure for polio but rather by a drug that kept polio from ever affecting a person. So too with abortion. Tom’s response to your post is not worth responding to as it contains no compassion for human life whatsoever and no understanding whatsoever of the laws of cause and effect. He raises the value of a fetus to a God and in doing so, lowers the value of any human being who already has taken their first breath on their own. He simply doesn’t get it. He diminishes the entire human race in the name of his beliefs.

Yes, Marsha, I show no compassion at all for human life by recognizing that abortion violently destroys human life and causes great harm to the mother. I raise a fetus to a God? No, just to the level of the humanity the fetus already possesses, which you so cavalierly deny, contra sense and science. You need to demagogue so that you might continue to whistle past the graveyard of 50,000,000 lives snuffed out by abortion in this country alone. I choose to look the facts square in the face.

Marsha— I went back and re-read my comment. I’m not sure what you mean by “compassion,” if you don’t recognize compassion there. All I can figure you mean is something like “let anyone do whatever they think will bring them happiness, regardless of any other opinions, data, moral structures, etc. The only thing that matters is people are affirmed in whatever they believe. So long as I agree with it. That’s compassion.” Is that what you mean by “compassion”?

Tom, when I show my support for a woman’s right of choice, you imply that I mean “let anyone do whatever they think will bring them happiness, regardless of any other opinions, data, moral structures, etc.” Where do I say this? Nowhere. Did I say I support any action other than a woman’s right of choice? No. Did I say I support any action that makes a person feel good? No. Why do you choose this approach? Why do you attempt to make me look like some ultra-liberal wacko? You show such a lack of belief in the human race, in my opinion. Do you honestly think a pro-choice advocate rejoices when abortions occur? Do you honestly think the Roe vs. Wade decision was celebrated because women love when another woman has an abortion? I believe there’s a part of you that does believe this. I believe you see people who disagree with you as enemies rather than fellow human beings trying to make the best decisions they can. I believe everything I’ve mentioned above is an example of your lack of compassion. I admit that I may be wrong and if I am wrong, I sincerely apologize to you.

Marsha. Abortion may not end by making it illegal. However, it will make clear to society what abortion is: murder. — Again, your position is like saying that we might as well make all types of murder legal. Then, instead of prosecuting murderers, we can spend that money on bigger welfare programs to remove motivation for people to commit murders. No rational or moral sense.

Rachel. The problem with your argument is that killing innocent people via abortions is not a required reaction to poverty, no matter how dire. The two issues are completely separate from each other. We can address whatever poverty, war, death penalty or other issues we may have without having a law that legalizes the taking of innocent life. — Your argument is like saying that we should make all murder legal. Then focus on making big welfare programs so that nobody feels motivated to murder anyone else. It doesn’t make rational or moral sense.

I’m sorry that we can’t agree on a way to help stop the atrocities. I am in favor of reducing abortion, as I believe that President Obama is as well. We just disagree on the way to get there. I support organizations that help women choose life, either through adoption or by offering assistance to help them raise the children themselves. I volunteer with our local nuns when they go to abortion clinics and offer options for women that are questioning abortion vs. adoption. I give to organizations that help in similar manners. However, I do not support laws limiting a woman’s right to make these choices for herself based on her personal beliefs and situation. I think that as a nation, pro-choice people could make a huge difference if they worked to find ways to limit abortions instead of resorting to banning them by law. That’s just the reality of the situation. We can’t change that. We can make a difference if we choose to. I have.

JustinH— I salute you for your pro-life activity. But just laws are instructional toward a better society, not just a mirror of a society that has become just; contrariwise, unjust laws are instructional toward an unjust society just as much as they are the product of unjust societies. If we accept an incremental approach to “wean people” off of abortion that is a tacit acceptance that abortion is not the atrocity that it is. This is not a matter of reducing larceny or most other merely undesirable activity. This is a matter, literally of life and death. Either the life in the womb is a separate human person with her own life animating her own internal natural processes on the path to her own natural death and therefore with her own right to life, or she is a lump of tissue indistinct from the mother. Since medical science has pretty much ruled out the latter and increasingly gives us more scientific reasons to hold the former, those who persist in supporting a “woman’s right” to an abortion are more obviously supporting her “right to kill her child.” We have laws proscribing many things that people think ought to be perfectly acceptable; why accept the intentional taking of innocent human life for any more time simply because the mother (or the father, or the mother’s parents, or the mother’s boyfriend, or etc.) *wants* it to be okay and *wants* the child dead (or, in the rationalization some use, “doesn’t want the child to crimp her/their style so they can keep on doin’ what they’ve been doin, consequences, and that child’s own life, be damned). So yes, continue working to reduce abortion, but recognize that it is not the sort of thing that can be abided and rooted out piecemeal—it must be ended as a matter of law, with the catechesis about *why* it is wrong coming later.

Justin, dude.. um.. the POTUS has done more to increase the holocaust of the murder of unborn humans more than any previous president to date. You’ve gotta be blind not to see that. Or, just plain ignorant of the facts of Obama’s Presidency.

JustinH, thanks for your views from someone who has chosen to give their time and effort to minimizing abortion in a way that doesn’t infringe on a women’s right of choice. You’re a wonderful voice on this blog. It has been said that this century is the century of “the woman,” when more and more women will step forward to take over the reigns of leading the human race into a more compassionate and less violent world. American women will lead this change and nothing will stop it.

Yes: a century of women killing women, considering that most abortions are done on female babies, especially in countries like China. Not to mention that more than half of the pregnancies in New York City to black women end in abortion. So not only are abortion “rights” supporters misogynists, they are also racists. Very compassionate and less violent of you, Marsha. ———– (And I can’t help but add the observation that Marsha somehow thinks it “compassionate” and “less violent” to allow women to have their babies burned alive with chemicals, ripped limb from limb, or sliced by a knife with a high-suction vacuum in the womb. A terribly sick way to define “compassion” or “less violent.” Glad it’s not on my conscience.)

JustinH. If an abortion is trivial enough of an event that it should be legal, why do anything to try to reduce them? — You either recognize that it is taking an innocent life or you do not. How do you justify a law that allows people to take innocent life? For example, citizens aren’t allowed to murder each other on the basis that one citizen believes that it should be ok and would be convenient for them.

Tom, your point is well taken, but we would do well to call out politicians who support torture and the death penalty when they “utter the words ‘moral responsibility’ with regard to protecting anyone’s lives.” I feel that there’s a lot of free pass given to those moral issues on this site.

Ben— First, I was inclined not to respond at all because this is a needless tangent. But i’ll offer this response anyhow: 1) no one on this site advocates for torture. You may disagree with some of us on what is or is not torture, but that’s a different question from giving a free pass on approval of torture. 2) While it is good to advocate for just policies regarding the death penalty, and while a very good argument can be made that there is no place in this country where it is still necessary, its usage still does not rise to the level of abortion (much less the barbarity that BAIPA sought to prevent) because the latter is always and everywhere heinous while the former not necessarily so. So while your point is taken, I think the difference is sufficient to avoid any charges of hypocrisy or selective moral outrage. cheers.

He’s on a roll. We can stop it in November. In the interim we must discover our solidarity. We need to affirm our love of country by rejecting the hate-filled government that seeks to alter it forever. Saint Michael lead us in this battle.

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